Coming under Panasonic, and the end of an independent Sanyo (2009)

The branch that returned to the main house

The way Sanyo ended has its origins written into it. Founded as a branch of Matsushita Electric, a company that had sought its openings abroad and in new fields while avoiding a head-on clash with the main house closed its story, in the end, by coming under that main house’s umbrella. Of all the technologies it had invested in across every direction, only batteries and solar cells could compete in the world; that Panasonic valued this one point decided, at a stroke, both the end of independence and the survival of the technology. The bundle of businesses that a company owning little had spread by its wits held value, for the buyer, only in part.

Seen another way, this was a rescue, and a transfer of valuable technology to a vessel that could hold it. But Sanyo as an independent locus of decision disappears here. Why could a company that had kept taking bold risks under family management not choose, at the last, to rebuild on its own? The structure in which none of its scattered investments could win on scale seems to have fixed this company’s fate on a plane apart from the excellence of any single technology. It was a run of sixty-four years that began by splitting from Matsushita and ended by returning to it.